Page 2 of 402 PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. - The Man Who Laughs

I. The Tadcaster Inn
II. Open-Air Eloquence
III. Where the Passer-by Reappears
IV. Contraries Fraternize in Hate
V. The Wapentake
VI. The Mouse Examined by the Cats
VII. Why Should a Gold Piece Lower Itself by Mixing with a Heap of
Pennies?
VIII. Symptoms of Poisoning
IX. Abyssus Abyssum Vocat

BOOK THE FOURTH.--THE CELL OF TORTURE.

I. The Temptation of St. Gwynplaine
II. From Gay to Grave
III. Lex, Rex, Fex
IV. Ursus Spies the Police
V. A Fearful Place
VI. The Kind of Magistracy under the Wigs of Former Days VII. Shuddering
VIII. Lamentation

BOOK THE FIFTH.--THE SEA AND FATE ARE MOVED BY THE SAME BREATH.

I. The Durability of Fragile Things
II. The Waif Knows Its Own Course
III. An Awakening
IV. Fascination
V. We Think We Remember; We Forget

BOOK THE SIXTH.--URSUS UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS.

I. What the Misanthrope said
II. What He did
III. Complications
IV. Moenibus Surdis Campana Muta
V. State Policy Deals with Little Matters as Well as with Great

BOOK THE SEVENTH.--THE TITANESS.

I. The Awakening
II. The Resemblance of a Palace to a Wood
III. Eve
IV. Satan
V. They Recognize, but do not Know, Each Other

BOOK THE EIGHTH.--THE CAPITOL AND THINGS AROUND IT.

I. Analysis of Majestic Matters
II. Impartiality
III. The Old Hall
IV. The Old Chamber
V. Aristocratic Gossip
VI. The High and the Low
VII. Storms of Men are Worse than Storms of Oceans
VIII. He would be a Good Brother, were he not a Good Son

BOOK THE NINTH.--IN RUINS.

I. It is through Excess of Greatness that Man reaches Excess of
Misery
II. The Dregs

CONCLUSION.--THE NIGHT AND THE SEA.

I. A Watch-dog may be a Guardian Angel
II. Barkilphedro, having aimed at the Eagle, brings down the Dove III. Paradise Regained Below
IV. Nay; on High!

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

URSUS.

I.

Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf: probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found _Ursus_ fit for himself, he had found _Homo_ fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned their partnership to account at fairs, at village fêtes, at the corners of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal processions.

Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round his neck and pulled fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had thus grown old together. They encamped at haphazard on a common, in the glade of a wood, on the waste patch of grass where roads intersect, at the outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in market-places, in public walks, on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches. When the cart drew up on a fair green, when the gossips ran up open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round the pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his mouth, politely made a collection among the audience. They gained their livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers wolfish arts, which swelled the receipts. "Above all things, do not degenerate into a man," his friend would say to him.